1989, Lamesa, Texas. A community driven by oil and cotton – a town where everyone knows everyone else’s business.
Tolly Driver, seventeen, a good kid with more potential than application, exists on the outskirts with his best friend, Amber. They navigate the hellscape of the teenage social scene, sticking together in a place that doesn’t know how to be different.
But when they go to a fateful party at Deek Masterton’s house – a party that ends in a series of gruesome, brutal and extravagant murders – Tolly’s world gets flipped upside-down. Because some slashers are born in violence and retribution, some were born that way – and some were just in the wrong place, at the wrong time…

I struggled with ‘I Was A Teenage Slasher‘. I was intrigued by the tone of the storytelling for the first 20%. Then I became frustrated at the meandering pace. By 60% I could feel my engagement waning. At 75% I considered setting the book aside, except this was Stephen Graham Jones, so I kept hoping for something I could love. The last 15% of the book grabbed hold of my emotions and twisted them hard. Suddenly my lack of engagement fell away, I ended the book with tears in my eyes. I’m still not sure what to make of the book as a whole so I’m just going to share the reactions that I had as I made my way through it and leave you to judge for yourself if this one is for you.

18%

This is living up to its Slasher title. The first set of killings were gory and violent in a pointless arrogant-alpha-teen-drunk way. It was a classic slasher movie set-piece scene: gore galore, blood and bits of flesh and brain everywhere and a killer who is a total nightmare.

I’m not a fan of Slasher movies. Most of them are too exploitative for me. I refuse to be pushed into a headspace where gore = fun. 

What makes this book different and what I’m hoping will make it worth reading is that it’s told from a fatalist perspective that abandons agency but embraces nostalgia and a sort of wry regret. It’s a memoir rather than a thriller which puts the violence at a distance, moving the focus from effect to cause.

35%

This story turns 80s slasher movies into a peculiarly American form of folk tale, meant to warn the young about how evil works in the world. The assertion seems to be that the conventions built into the slasher movies have gained enough of a grip on the collective psyche that they affect behaviour in the real world. They are a kind of spell, waiting to be triggered by the right set of motives and actions. It’s told from the point of view of a Slasher, Tolly, who wants to share how he became a Slasher and the compulsions that determined his behaviour once the slashing began.

The wry, introspective tone of the storytelling mostly works for me but the extended creative avoidance deployed to delay telling how and why Tolly killed six people is wearing thin. 

Is it wrong that I’m muttering “For God’s sake, Tolly, you’re a slasher, get on with killing someone why don’t ya?“

60%

 Oh dear, this book is starting to remind of the ‘concept albums’ college bands like Emerson Lake and Palmer, Genesis and Yes pumped out back in the 70s. The concepts were interesting and the execution was skilful BUT the emotion was absent. 

I’m tired of Tolly’s introspection about his transformation into a Slasher, which seems to be the equivalent of being bitten by a werewolf. I’m also becoming bored by the laboured inclusion of 1980s pop culture. It feels less like period authenticity and more like clumsy product placement.

65%

 I’m struggling with this book now and my own reaction puzzles me

How is it that I can accept Elena Michaels being turned into a werewolf by a bite and Peter Parker gaining superpowers after being bitten by a radioactive spider, so why is it so hard to accept a drop of blood turning Tolly Driver into a Slasher?

I can think of three reasons:

1. Because Slashers seem more made up than werewolves and superheroes. Yeah, I know they’re all fictional but werewolves are an ancient myth and superheroes seem to have been around forever. Everyone recognises werewolves and superheroes. Slashers live only in the imaginations of 80s movie buffs, Film students and horror novel enthusiasts.
2. Because Tolly Driver seems too real to transform into a Slasher thing. Tolly comes across as a normal(ish) seventeen-year-old white boy from a small town in West Texas in 1989. It’s hard to see why he’d be Slasher material. Yeah, I know that might be the whole point- that the unfairness of it all is what makes it tragic – but it doesn’t make it any easier to accept.
3. Because it feels like Stephen Graham Jones is just playing with ideas and with me. Nothing wrong with a writer being playful except but for me, it’s translating into unconvincing.

100%

Wow, I almost set this book aside at the 70% mark because I wasn’t engaged with any of the characters (well, except Amber. What kind of person wouldn’t be engaged with Amber?). I was watching Tolly do his gory slasher thing and I was bored. I didn’t care about Tolly or the people he was killing. There was no tension and, on my part, very little belief. It was about as exciting as being walked through a mathematical proof.

I’m glad I didn’t set it aside though because, in the last 15% of the book, everything got real and personal. I won’t say why because that would spoil the surprise. Although it wasn’t the surprise that mattered most to me, it was the emotional intensity of the situation. Suddenly I cared what choices Tolly made and who got to live or die. I was impressed with the way the final confrontation worked out but what pushed me from impressed to emotionally gutted was what Tolly did in the final scene. I didn’t see that coming but it made everything feel real.